


Ghost and Machine

by cynassa



Category: captain america movies
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-14
Updated: 2014-04-14
Packaged: 2018-01-19 07:43:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,336
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1461334
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cynassa/pseuds/cynassa
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Six ways things could turn out after the end of 'The Winter Soldier'</p>
            </blockquote>





	Ghost and Machine

Briefly, from most likely to least:

1.

They never find him. They never even find a body although Natasha makes an odd face when Steve snaps that out. It’s not like he doesn’t know why, it’s not like he hasn’t seen guys who could only be identified by their dogtags or the other guys who just sorta… never got found. Dammit, it isn’t like Buck wasn’t one of them.

Sam and Steve look and look and sometimes Hawkeye helps, dropping in on them and making them go out a bit and Natasha sends them news even though she’s supposed to be building a cover that’s got nothing at all to do with them. Then they save the world, and they look again and Sam’s the best fella a guy can ask for but this is not his fight and Steve tells him that. Steve keeps looking alone. 

The world keeps going on and Steve keeps looking.

2.

You don’t come back okay from years of brainwashing and death and torture; sometimes Steve isn’t sure he came back okay from that first time he was stuck as Zola’s experiment. Hell, he couldn’t have. No one could, Bucky just kept going because that was the sort of guy he was. 

Steve still can’t believe Sam did it, but Sam tells him, man, I made it so you didn’t have to. Steve wishes he were better than this, than resenting Sam and being grateful at the same time.

Steve fights for him to be buried in Arlington, pulls in favours, becomes entirely reckless if not for Maria Hill of all people, telling him to slow down, stop behaving less like a bleeding invitation for the vultures. Sam sticks around too. 

3.

Nick fucking Fury and his fucking secrets and plans. He sets up the trail for the winter soldier so Sam and Steve keep coming across HYDRA or AIM or other bullies with agendas that Steve doesn’t really care about because, like Clint says when helping them out south of Hungary, maybe if they weren’t planning to blow people up they could all have some booze and discuss it. 

Steve blows up right in Fury’s cool face when Natasha lets them know, two years in. She tells Steve to cool it, that they should have expected it. Fury’s always been the man with plans behind plans, but she doesn’t look nearly as calm about it as he would have thought. Sam’s pissed they’ve been doing Fury’s dirty work but Steve’s more pissed at him using Bucky to do it. 

He asks his old neighbour if that’s why she’s been keeping in touch and she says her aunt was missing him before she forgot he was alive. It’s not really an answer. He’s not surprised when he finds out that Agent 13 sometimes works with the new Agent 22 but that he usually works alone. He’s not surprised when he hears the rumours that Agent 22 is furious with Fury.

He’s not surprised when Fury tells him that Agent 22 has refused any contact with him, through Sam or any other way.

4.

They find him fighting a dozen guys in Ukraine; then they find him cleaning up a smuggling ring. Then they hear about two guys dead, Fury tells them that his new people were investigating them. Their cover was good, but Fury’s still got some tricks up his sleeve and he helps Steve out for a favour to be named later. No telling if the guys were involved with Project Winter Soldier, but they were definitely involved with Department X.

Eventually someone gets in a lucky shot and they find him feverish, boiling bandages with his metal hand in an abandoned basement and the other hand doesn’t look too good. There’s a bloody knife and a bloody bullet nearby. 

“Oh, he’s a doctor too. Your boy’s got all sorts of skills, Cap.” Sam tells him, when he tries to go to Bucky and Bucky just shifts backward, his head’s bent so that if he had hair as long as he did back in Washington, it’d be covering his face. 

It’s not even funny, but he snorts and Bucky’s stance eases just a little. He won’t let them touch him but he doesn’t run either. Takes some of the food they get and even raises an eyebrow at the antibiotics. Steve remembers the way drugs won’t work on him after Dr Erskine’s treatment and sheepishly takes it back so someone can use it.

Steve talks at him hoping he’s going to reply, Sam talks at him like he’s okay either way. Then there’s a shift when Sam’s keeping watch and Steve isn’t quite asleep yet and Bucky isn’t sleeping because Buck doesn’t sleep an awful lot these days, but he prefers to sleep when Steve’s up. Sam says, “Natasha, formerly Agent Romanoff, she said you could do a lot of good.”

“I’m trying to,” Buck says, and his voice is hoarse and you can barely hear the first word but Steve’s heart speeds up anyway.

Sam’s shrugging when Steve opens his eyes, “More good,” he says, casually.

Bucky comes back with them, to America.

5.

There’s this guy in Brooklyn. Sam meets him when they come back to regroup and he drops in to help the local VA. The guy’s got amnesia from war injuries maybe but he’s got military written all over him, and he’s lost his left arm. He looks like…but he’s got a job helping out, not glamorous work but honest, in an art gallery and he’s got a guy friend, _boyfriend_ , and an honest-to-god grin and Steve just. Yeah.

6.  
There’s a guy in Brooklyn. Steve thought Bucky might come back here, so they came back to look. It’s snowing, and Sam’s gone out to get provisions just in case they’re snowed in.

“You’ve been looking for me,” he has his shield in his hand because he heard movement but he drops it.

“Bucky,” he says, hushed, more reverent than he’s ever been even in Church. 

“I’m not Bucky,” it’s a snarl, half-animal.

“You’re Bucky enough for me,” Steve says, and it takes him a moment to realize the rough sound he hears is Bucky laughing. It’s true, any bit of Bucky’s more than he’s had in years, and he’ll take it.

He keeps laughing, sounding wilder, until Steve steps up to shake him and then he moves back in a flash, into a corner. 

“You don’t know what I’ve done,” Bucky says hoarsely.

“I know what they did to you. I know it wasn’t your fault.” Steve insists because Bucky’s always been bull headed about some stuff but Steve could out stubborn him nine times out of ten. 

“You think that makes it better?” he sneers at Steve, like Steve’s naïve or something. Same way he’d act back when Steve would try to take on bullies by himself, because it wasn’t going to change anything, Bucky had said, exasperated, but that wasn’t the point.

“I think that makes it not your fault. We are gonna find the guys who did them and we’re going to make sure they pay for it but you need to know it wasn’t you.”

Bucky starts shaking a little, but stiffens up when Steve tries to step forward. 

“You are some guy aren’t you. Captain America, defender of freedom and…and,” he sounds like he’s quoting something, probably off some dumb news channel and it’s half awed.

“I’m just a guy from Brooklyn, remember Buck?” Steve pleads. 

Bucky looks pained when he says, “Steve,” and Steve moves quick enough to grab hold of Bucky as he slides down to the floor. 

//The chances of Erskine finding Steve Rogers, and then Steve Rogers surviving the debilitating pain of having his cellular structure rewritten in a matter of moments is statistically insignificant. Saving a bunch of guys alone from behind enemy lines and finding his best friend alive was unimaginable luck.

Steve Rogers has a habit of beating the odds.


End file.
